New Delhi: Days after the Pakistan government allotted PKR 2 billion to their Army to combat fake news, an investigation by Drop Site News revealed a shocker: the Army itself was allegedly using a ghost think tank to spread misinformation about Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI.
The irony is not lost on Pakistanis, who are both embarrassed and shocked.
“This is why the sheriff of Pindi needed 2 billion rupees,” Pakistani X user @eyesofchange noted.
It all started when a Pakistan broadcast channel, GTV aired a segment on 20 December, based on a report titled “Democracy Under Siege: Economic Fallout and Diplomatic Implications of Protests in Pakistan.”
The paper was attributed to a Washington DC-based think tank named the Beltway Grid Policy Centre, which claimed that the ongoing protests by former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s PTI were causing significant harm to the country’s economy.
According to the report, PTI’s protests were leading to daily economic losses of PKR 190 billion, adding up to PKR 3 trillion in cumulative damages.
Except that weeks later, it came out that Beltway Grid Policy Centre didn’t quite exist.
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Of ghosts, robots, and the Pakistan Army
On 9 January, Drop Site News, an independent news organisation, published an investigative report by Ryan Grim, Waqas Ahmed, and Murtaza Hussain, revealing that the Beltway Grid Policy Centre was a ghost think tank. It had no actual staff, no website, and no verifiable credentials.
Instead, Drop Site uncovered that the think tank was entirely staffed by AI-generated “experts,” many of whom had names straight out of 19th-century literature, such as Elijah Bowers and Lina Abi-Saab.
“The organization may be so hard at work defending the policies of the Pakistan military and criticizing former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the team simply hasn’t had time to lead previous lives,” the investigative report sarcastically noted.
What’s more, DropSite found that the numbers cited in the report—particularly the PKR 190 billion daily loss—mirrored a similar internal report allegedly circulated by the Pakistan Army.
The similarities pointed to the possibility that the military may have ‘created’ the fake think tank and its report as part of a wider propaganda effort.
Moreover, the ghost think tank’s research specialists—Bowers and Abi-Saab—were specifically identified as experts in ‘5th Generation Warfare,’ a concept that revolves around managing information and perception, especially in digital spaces. This raised suspicions that the report was part of a larger information war, aimed not at foreign audiences or international media but at Pakistan’s military leadership itself.
The term ‘5th Generation Warfare’ is a term often used by Pakistan’s military leadership to describe digital or hybrid warfare tactics, and has become a favourite catchphrase in Rawalpindi’s military circles, the report said.
“The fake DC think-tank Beltway Grid, whose website domain was registered on October 11 of last year, seems to be part of a covert effort to shape U.S. policy in Pakistan’s favor by spreading disinformation online as a means of influencing mainstream discourse,” the report said.
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When absurdities abound
The absurdity of the situation quickly drew ridicule from Pakistani citizens.
“Incredible. The clowns in charge in Pakistan actually made up a fake ‘international think tank’ staffed completely by bots to spread AI-generated ‘research’ through the media for propaganda purposes. This is the same regime that now wants additional billions to fight ‘fake news’,” writer Ammar Rashid wrote on X.
Others expressed both embarrassment and disgust.
“It’s one embarrassment after another. The regime now down to making fake D.C. think tanks powered by chatGPT to stay in power. Interestingly, this “disinformation” campaign is not meant for public or foreign powers; it is meant for the Army Chief to give him an illusion of “progress” and “successes” at a time of great failure. The ugly reality of Pakistan’s system is that it works against the person in power”, professor Hussain Nadeem wrote on X.
The gravity of the situation wasn’t lost either.
“It’d be funny if it weren’t for the seriousness of where Pakistan stands today. The profound level of deceit and fraud that passes for tactics in the name of state interest only reveals breakdown of national leadership,” activist Khaula Hadeed wrote.
One X user @nemesis summed up the general sentiment: “It rarely gets more absurd than this.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)